Song of courage

Opera tenor Nicola Ugo Stame took on many roles but proved himself a true hero during World War II in his defiance against fascism, says Christopher Gillett

- Christopher Gillett

As you face the main entrance of Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera, on its right side runs a street, Via Torino, where on the theatre’s wall hangs a large, despondent laurel wreath. Many years of midday sun have bleached the colour from the foliage and the tricolore ribbon attached to it. The wreath sits below a stone plaque which says (in Italian):

In 1939 in this theatre, while rehearsing Puccini’s Turandot in the role of Calaf, the tenor NICOLA UGO STAME was arrested for anti-fascism. For the courage of his ideas, after being tortured in Via Tasso, he was slaughtered with Nazi ferocity on the 24 March 1944 at the Ardeatine Caves

There is so much to digest in this epitaph. But the first question is certainly this: who was this Nicola Stame, the rare tenor who not only played the hero but who was actually heroic?

Born in 1908, Nicola Stame – Ugo to his family and friends – grew up in Puglia, in the town of Foggia, birthplace of the composer Umberto Giordano. As the child of a single mother, his life was hard. Poverty was rife. At a time when bread cost 45 cents a kilo, a farm labourer might earn just one lira a day. Politics became riven between Mussolini’s populist fascism and those who believed the solution to widespread poverty was socialism. Ugo reached adulthood during the early years of Mussolini’s dictatorship, but he had no time for Il Duce.